Return to the Darkness - Ripley Proserpina Page 0,47

have killed him?” I asked Ray. “If you’d set out to do it, how would you have done it differently than me?”

He stared at me a moment and then turned his attention to the window. “He’s such an ancient creature. I spent all that time researching him, reading about the myths associated with him. You found that same stuff…”

It had been the first time I’d realized what geniuses these guys were. Thorn had found all kinds of information about Erdirg.

“We did,” Thorn now answered. “It had to do with the folktale about the girl who used darkness.”

“But darkness only puts him to sleep,” Colton remarked. He caught my stare and said quickly, “Not that it wasn’t impressive. I’m just saying, both women he attached himself to used darkness, and he went into hibernation. He didn’t die.”

“Maybe I’m not dark enough,” I replied, but it was only half a joke. The girl I had been was plenty dark. Darker than I was now, because I had time and perspective the old Lacey didn’t. I was hopeful. How could I not be? Look at the men who loved me. “We didn’t know about my blood, though.” Surely, that was an advantage. The universe had to throw us a freaking bone here. “I closed portals to trap Mara. That wasn’t something I could do before.”

“Right.” Aaron smiled at me. “That was part of what we learned about the pouques.”

Ray’s face lit up and a bolt of relief shot through me. That expression was a good thing. It had to be. “Your pouque blood? Yeah. That changes things.”

Chapter 15

There wasn’t much for me to do for the next few hours. The guys and Ray set to work, creating a command center right in the kitchen of our fancy vacation house.

“Back then, I thought that the way to kill him was to poison the place he called home. I gathered stones and herbs and went out to the desert. To your home.” Ray glanced up from his computer. “Your old home. But the magic that was there didn’t respond to those things. That had been my plan.”

“It must have worked.” Otherwise, he wouldn’t have killed Erdirg in any reality.

“He wasn’t there when I went.” Ray shook his head and crossed his arms. “Either he was hiding, or it wasn’t truly his home. I don’t know.”

“How did you wake him up this time?” I asked. Since he’d arrived, I’d waited for him to share this information, but as time went on, I realized he either had forgotten I knew about it, or didn’t want to talk about it.

And that didn’t work for me.

The guys as one stopped typing and talking. “I thought…” Oliver began and then trailed off. He stared at his father, waiting.

“Jacinda’s towels.”

Of all the things I expected him to say, that wasn’t it.

“Huh?” Aaron asked. “Mom’s towels? What?”

“Mom has the same towels she’s always had. Washed and dried a hundred times, but some things linger. An essence lingers. A spirit.”

Ew. My spirit was on their towels? Colton barked a laugh and I couldn’t help smiling. At least we all had the sense of humor as a twelve-year-old boy. I wasn’t alone.

“When Lacey was exorcised,” he used air quotes, “she was wounded. You and your mom took care of her at our house. I thought maybe, somehow, her blood and whatever aura she had might have attached to those towels. So I took them into the desert—to your old home where I didn’t expect him to be—and I burned them.”

“And he woke up.” Colton dragged his hand down his face. “Right?”

“I can’t be sure, but I had a vision. Lacey was there. We were standing over an open grave. He wasn’t in it.”

That seemed like a good place to start. Erdirg’s empty grave. “Come on. We’ll go there.”

Colton lifted his lids. “You want to go now? This very second?”

I did. Right this very fucking second.

The drive over was a bit of a blur for me. We passed houses and it felt a little bit like I was watching a movie and the camera didn’t focus on anything. Long nights in Alaska had left me Googling random film trivia on the internet. When you couldn’t go outside, you found other things to do. That was what Rick had told me when I first moved there.

Fuck. Why was my mind wandering the way it was? Rick? He didn’t even know what was happening with me right now, and I wasn’t going to tell him. He had